bioarch_fan

This would be just as a collaborative project. I am currently working on my master's, so it wouldn't be beneficial to do the latter of the two. I just know a lot of professors somewhat close to where I am currently in school and their research has always interested me. But they don't have graduate students, so I figured it would be good to try and work with them a little bit. Something that's not along this topic that one of you might be able to help with. I am trying to convince my advisor to let me get an outside reader from another university on my committee because her dissertation work was on the same thing I'm doing for my thesis, just in another country (I'm literally looking at the same thing but from another region of the Europe). But my advisor says that she thinks the other professor might be too busy to join my committee. But she suggested to another of her students that she thinks it would be beneficial to have said professor be on her committee because she used a specific method. But as my thesis is looking at exactly what the other professor did, wouldn't it be more beneficial for me to have this professor and the other student to have the professor who created the method on her committee?

I actually know a few Canadian schools, one of which I'm going to be applying to for my PhD eventually, that funds ALL of their students for a total of 5 years (if you're working on your PhD). So yeah, they fund the same way we do here in the States. It's tuition waivers and a good living stipend.

You might also want to check out Mississippi State. We are an applied anthropology program with focuses in archaeology, bioarchaeology, and cultural anthropology. Right now we have 3 cultural professors and next year we're adding a fourth cultural professor. The new professor is a medical anthropologist but she does not particularly look into mental health. But you don't have to attend a university that has professors that do exactly what you want. Just as long as you have professors there who can help you and who are willing to work with you on your research. Plus, I saw that you're in/from Turkey. I'm not sure if you're wanting to maintain work in that region of the world but we're also really known for our specialty in the Middle East. We have one cultural professor who does research in Jordan and an archaeology professor who excavates in Israel. Last year we had an archaeology grad student graduate who is also from Turkey and he liked it here. Normally our department is really good at funding our students, even our international students. If you get funding from the department it's a full international fee waiver, 71% in-state tuition waiver, and around $4,500/semester stipend. You'll just have to pay for university fees, so around $1,000. It's also incredibly cheap to live in Starkville, so you could easily live off of your stipend. The application isn't due until February 15, so you'd still have time to take the TOEFL before the application deadline. If you have any questions about the department, professors, university, town, etc. please let me know!

No, you can still retake it and submit the most recent scores if you want. They don't start reviewing applications until the deadline (February 15 for Mississippi State). So you have until then to complete your application. So you would technically have another 2 months to take the GRE again and submit the scores to the university...if you want to improve your score you can if you put in the time in the next month to study and then take it early January. And don't be ashamed about asking them. Both David and Kate are extremely nice people. They'd be willing to talk to you about your scores and might be able to tell you what they believe you should do. I would HIGHLY suggest talking to one of them about your scores and just tell them that you're afraid your scores might hinder your chances of acceptance but you don't do well on standardized tests and see what they say. That's the only thing you can do.

Honestly Mississippi State doesn't even really look at the GRE that much. They take it into account when awarding funding but even then it's not that big of a deal. I didn't have a 300 when I applied here and I got in with funding. It really does depend on your entire application. I would say talk to either David or Kate and see what they say about your GRE score. But when I talked to my advisor, she didn't really say anything about it. She said I could take it again if I wanted to but it's not really that important to do it again. So just email all of your POIs and ask them what they would suggest doing. Most anthropology departments don't really take much weight into the GRE because it's a horrible way to determine the success of an applicant.

Thank you so much for your response! There are a lot of professors around where I go to school who I'd love to collaborate with because their research always interests me. Some of these schools don't have grad students of their own, so that would help me and them both I think. I'll talk to a couple of the grad students who are graduated or know my advisor and see what they say before I talk to my advisor about it. I don't think they'd mind too much but you're right, it'd be better to check with them before I initiate contact with these other professors!

So, my discipline is a relatively small field and I have a huge array of interests. My major professor isn't exactly doing much research right now and the research she is doing she has 2 other graduate students working on it (it's literally just database design stuff because she already collected the data). I know a lot of other scholars within a couple hours drive that I wouldn't mind getting a chance to work with on projects that they are part of. Is it common for a graduate student not at your university to attempt to work on a project with you? How should I go about trying to do this?

I'm a bioarchaeology MA student; however, my specialty is in Europe (particularly Italy). I, like you, started out wanting to do forensics, but that changed quickly when I talked to my undergrad advisor and she told me that I should think about doing bioarch primarily and do forensics on the side. Now I am a lot more bioarch and very little forensics. The question about MA vs PhD really depends on what you want to do with your work. If you want to teach...yes you need to get a PhD. It's very rare for MAs to get a teaching position. If you just want to work for CRM firms here in the US or for a field school in Peru, then maybe a MA will be fine. It all truly depends on what you want to do with your future. I do say that you should definitely get some experience doing a bioarchaeology field school if you can. That will greatly enhance your application and it will also help to make sure this is what you want to do with the next few years of your life. Don't hesitate to PM me if you have any questions!

I'm assuming that you either want to work with either Sharon DeWitte or Carlina de la Cova at USC. I know them both personally and they are both amazing individuals. I am going to try and get Sharon on my committee for my MA thesis since it is looking at Black Death in another context. USC is also on my list for PhD programs after I get my MA. UWF is amazing with Kristina (whom I also know personally). It is a great program and would be an amazing experience, especially with Kristina's research interests. Another school that you should look at is College of William & Mary. Michael Blakey is there and is a bioarchaeologist doing research on the African Diaspora. You could also potentially look at University of Oklahoma. They have a lot of bioarchaeologists on staff, but they are more centered around molecular bioarchaeology. However, Lesley Rankin-Hill is an Emerita there and she did research on the African Diaspora with Michael Blakey. So they might still be receptive to having you there to study that. I have plenty of other programs in mind that you could look at but it would take too long to type out on here. If you want some more help with finding programs, please feel free to PM me and I can try and help as much as I can.

I'm actually a little different from what the above both stated. I am also bioarch and say that you should be fairly broad when contacting departments. You should NEVER contact a department that cannot help you with your research. Find professors who use the same methods or are in the same region, but you'll likely never find someone who does both regional and methodological research the same as you. So in your email you could say that you're interested in doing bioarchaeology in China or that you're interested in bioarchaeological research looking at (enter methodological/theoretical interest). Sadly, our field is very small and there are very few departments that have bioarchaeologists and very few professors work in specific regions. That's why it's important to be a little broad because your research interests will likely change in the first couple of years of grad school. And they want to see that you can be flexible with your research because sadly situations arise that limit what you can do. I'm currently struggling with this right now with my research.

Honestly your scores sound pretty amazing to me. I didn't have anywhere close to the scores that you received and got into my graduate program...though this is just a MA program. I will likely be taking the GRE again before I decide if I'm going to apply to PhD programs. And technically GRE scores sometimes matter for some schools, but many anthropology programs that I talked to said that the GRE is far down their list on requirements. They understand that the GRE is a horrible way to assess whether someone will do well in a graduate program. But again, I wouldn't stress too much. You have a good score from what I can tell. It truly is more about fit, letters of rec, and your SOP than your GRE scores.

I would say contact the departments in question and specifically your POI at each program and see what they say about your GRE scores. I didn't have an amazing GRE score but still got into a good MA program. Most departments understand that the GRE is a horrible way to assess potential applicants. Most professors and departments I talked to don't necessarily have a "cut-off" for the GRE but they will use the GRE to help decided between applicants or to decide who gets funding. But again, I would say contact your POI and see what they say.

Yeah, feel free to PM me any questions that you have.

My MA is also applied anthro.

I'm a bioarch MA student right now. If you have any questions please send me a message and I'll respond fairly quickly!

Yeah, I wouldn't mind taking a look at your CV. One of my classes in undergrad was actually constructing a CV and seeing what was good and bad; plus I did it again for another class when I started grad school.

If anyone, particularly biological anthropology (bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology are best) applicants, needs someone to read their SOP and resume/CV, please let me know. I can try and help out as much as I can. The reason I'd say bioarch and forensic anth would be best for me to read is because those are my specialties and I think I could give better advice on those. But I can do any other SOP that needs to be read too. And CVs/resumes can really be read by anyone and are really dependent on the person writing them.

Anthropology is THE field to be in to study the culture and history of early humans. I am a biological anthropology graduate student and I had to teach this topic quite often this past year. Biological anthropology has multiple subfields that you could go into; however, you would want to do the biological anthropology subfield because there's a specialty under that that studies early hominin evolution called paleoanthropology. This is the specialty that you would be interested in. Learning a second language isn't particularly important for the subfield, but you should be willing to learn the language of the country in which you'd be doing the majority of your field work. For example, if you want to study the Dmanisi branch of Homo erectus, you would want to learn Georgian so you can communicate with the people in that particular country. That's the same for many of the other areas in which early hominins migrated. Furthermore, you would want to potentially learn either German or French because a lot of the early literature would be in one of these two languages. But there's been a lot of literature in the past couple of decades written by English and American scholars, so you'd still be fine with that. Grades it truly depends on the program in which you'd be applying. If I can make a suggestion, don't look for just Canadian schools because there are A LOT of paleoanthropologists on this side of the border who you would want to work with. So when you start looking at schools I would say talk to those professors whom you would like to work with and see what they say. If you have good grades, what we would consider a 3.4 GPA or higher out of a 4.0 in the States, then you would still be good. I'm not sure about equivalencies in Canada though. But one thing I would also suggest is mainly apply to master's granting institutions first because most professors from what I have seen prefer to see a master's degree when applying to PhD programs. I was actually told that by a professor up in Canada and one down here in the States.

Plus who wouldn't want to work with Tim White...hello it's Tim White.

I might be working with ITS next year, but I'm honestly really hoping for a position from the Biology Department because they pay a lot more and I prefer teaching over anything else. Idk why...but I prefer the closer connections I make with my students. This past year I had students who were actually sad the semester was ending. So it gave me hope that I was doing something right...but I guess my department doesn't care about the student evals at all. Sadly we don't have a union for our graduate student workers. That's kind of the negative about going to school in Mississippi.

The same thing happened to me in my department. I was told by my POI that my funding would be a two year TA position. I got my funding for the first year, but was told that my funding for the second year was being cut for "unsatisfactory performance" even though the professor I TA'd for never once came into my lab to watch me teach and I took on 100% more responsibility under her direction than the other, "senior," TA did (plus this senior TA read the evaluation I got and said that none of it was right and that she's actually the one who did most of what they said I did). My evaluation from the professor this semester was almost exactly the same as the one from last semester without her having watched me teach at all...so it makes me seem like they came together and the professor this semester copied the evaluation from last semester. I brought this up in my meeting with the dept chair and DGS and the professor from this semester just looked down when I mentioned it because she knew she was in the wrong. In my opinion, the only reason they truly cut my funding was because they wanted to bring in more graduate students this year. The only way for them to do that was to cut funding from someone that originally thought their TA position was for 2 years and give it to someone else. I'm seeking funding elsewhere and I'm trying to decide if I want to contact the higher-ups at the university and let them know what's going on and that I do not agree with the funding decision w/o a proper evaluation. Hopefully they can figure out a way to set things straight and to maybe reprimand the professors this year and let them know that this won't be tolerated. Hopefully you can figure something out for the future! It sounds like this happens quite often in anthro depts since the funding is so dismal in most of them.

It's very rare to find strictly cultural programs (or really single sub-discipline programs at all) because most anthropology departments understand the need for the 4 field approach. I would suggest not looking at strictly cultural programs because, to me at least, it sounds like you don't care about the contributions that the other fields can bring to your research. For example, my specialty is bioarchaeology, but my advisor's education was in biocultural anthropology; therefore, I learn both the biological and cultural aspects of societies to help understand the health of populations both in the past and present.

I would agree completely...wait until after the end of the semester to email grad students at these programs. Most of us are worrying about papers that are due in the next week or 2. Maybe wait until June to email them but don't forget that some students go out of the country to do research, so they might not get back to you quickly.

I would actually argue opposite from the funding situation. PhDs aren't always funded, and neither are MAs. But there are many MAs that do fund. My current school funds most of their students and so does University of Alabama and Georgia State. These are just 3 of the schools off the top of my head that I know of MAs who received funding. Yes, I'll agree with the second one but that's kind of the thing with academia...it's not always a sure thing. I can't tell you what to do...you're the only one who can do that. But I can say that most of the time it is easier to get into a PhD program with a MA than without. I've actually heard of people being denied at specific schools for a PhD because they didn't have an MA and other people did.

I also want to add onto what runningwithquills was talking about for MA programs. It is becoming increasingly more common for PhD programs to prefer admitting students who already have their MA because it shows how serious they are about their studies and it shows that they are prepared for original research. I would seriously consider one of the MA offers because it will look better when you start the PhD applications again in the future.